The Final Word on Carlos the Jackal
A compelling new biography traces the rise and fall of the “world’s first super-terrorist”
IN THE END, IT WAS CARLOS THE JACKAL’S TESTICLES THAT DID HIM IN. Having boasted of bedding more than 400 women and killing 83 people by his own hand, he was suffering from a condition known as varicocele—“essentially a varicose vein in the scrotum,” as author Joby Warrick puts it. It was 1994, and the Venezuelan-born Marxist, anti-Semite champion of the Palestine cause and hired killer, age 44, had been given sanctuary by Sudan’s Islamist regime, which was also harboring Osama bin Laden.
Carlos’s Jordanian wife wanted a child, and his medical condition affected his sperm count, as well as his extra-curricular activities with other women. What Carlos didn’t know was that the CIA was tailing him. The routine procedure on his private parts provided the ideal opportunity to bring an end to his storied career as, in Warrick’s words, “the first of a breed of international super-terrorists, a larger-than-life outlaw whose deeds spanned four continents and captured the attention of the entire world.”
